Denkou likes the apartment they live in.
It is on the 7th floor of a big, tall grey building and there are lots of windows. In the mornings, the sun is so bright and yellow that it reminds Denkou of the big, gold sceptre Skunk displays in his room. He says it's "stolen". He also says lots of words Denkou cannot access.
"▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ light..." Skunk shambles out of bed. Denkou sees him move from their room. Skunk is saying more grey words – as Denkou decides to call them – and putting a sheet of cardboard between his window and the blinds. They watch as Skunk lumbers back into bed, sighing from exhaustion as he sinks under the sheets.
Denkou's room is a supply closet. Jazz says it's been "refurbished", which is a funny word to Denkou. They imagine the consonant sounds in it going up and down like a roller coaster. Denkou's bed is the inner shell of their containment capsule. Jazz tied a mobile to the shelf above it, and it dangles with small plush stars and moons. Denkou's bed is also beside where the family's laundry cart is kept. It always smells of a nice compound of dipalmethyl hydroxyethylammoinum methosulfate.
Denkou likes to turn invisible and walk around the building. Mr. Skunk is asleep now. Denkou swoops their arms, just like Blues showed them, and spins on their heel. They vanish, at least to the human eye; Denkou looks down at their hands, which now register as tinted in their optic overlay. They are ready to go.
The front door is locked. Beside the doorframe on the left are long objects, with big objects snapped into them, hanging precariously by nails in the wall. Those are guns. Denkou asked about them last night, and Jazz showed Denkou what they do. He held one out the window and a loud marble flew out. They laughed very hard into the night. Denkou looks at the guns on the wall and smiles, their hands unbolting the door lock.
The door has very loud, rusty hinges. It's so Mr. Skunk will hear whenever it opens. Luckily, Denkou does not have to open it wide enough to get through.
Denkou has only lived here for a week, but they already have favourite places to look. The building is eight floors tall, which from the street, reminds Denkou of a big beetle: it is a maroon-bricked rectangle, resting on four wide pillars at either end, and a centre post for the front doors and elevator. Mr. Skunk and Denkou's uncles park on the building's roof. Sometimes people park cars on the ground, where the pillars are, but not Mr. Skunk.
During the day, Mr. Skunk and Uncle Blues are asleep. Jazz doesn't stay overnight sometimes, and today is one of those days. Denkou knows Jazz is the last one they want to wake up in the middle of the day. Denkou slips into the hall smoothly.
They close the door behind them. They remember to turn the doorknob to the side, as if they were opening the door...this meant the unlocked inner mechanism wouldn't click against the doorframe when they pushed it back.
Denkou runs to the elevator. The first thing they liked to do was check the ground floor lobby. They press the G button in the elevator – not the 1, but G for Ground, like Blues showed them – and wait patiently until it opens again. Denkou runs into the corner of the boxy little lobby and sits by the maintenance door. To their left is a wall covered in little numbered metal doors. They almost look like the real numbered doors elsewhere in the building. Mr. Skunk's family's door is 23.
Almost every day, a man in a dark grey uniform comes inside, puts presidents for the residents in the little metal doors, and leaves. He always does it around 12:30PM, and Denkou is ready and waiting with minutes to spare. They don't see many humans moving around in the building, at least not during the day.
Denkou waits. There are a lot of cars coming and going in the street outside. Denkou can just barely see them pass by through the apartment door's tinted glass, and beyond that runs a long banister on either side of the front walkway.
Eventually, they can see the grey-suited man come into view, strolling up the narrow front sidewalk. The big bag he carries is especially big today. The grey man is whistling. It's an upbeat song, one Denkou doesn't know, but it sounds like the stuff Jazz listens to when he fixes the car. The grey man unlocks the front door and steps inside, but only briefly; he fishes some envelopes from his big shoulder bag, and sifts them into the wall of little doors. If the present is too big to slide through it, he uses his magic key to open a door. Denkou watches this quietly, trying to remember each apartment number in order. 6, 11, 22, 28. He sorts all the door presents by how big the number is.
Just as quickly as he appeared, the grey man is out through the front door. Denkou waits for the door to click shut before they stand up again. They approach the wall of little doors, eyeing them curiously. Apartment 28's is closest to the floor, and its present still protrudes from the tiny entry slot, so Denkou stands up to grab it. They smoothly pull it out and run back to the elevator doors.
Denkou opens the envelope on the way up. They tear away the top layer of paper, letting it fall on the elevator floor. There is a letter and special colour papers inside. Denkou likes the colour of the delicate small papers, so they tuck them into their jumpsuit collar, for safekeeping. They hope nobody will come into the elevator; they know it'll look like shards of colourful paper floating a metre off the ground.
They try to read the letter, but there are too many big words they have to download. "Defendant", "surety", "re-offence". When the elevator door opens, Denkou steps into the middle of the wide metal frame. They drop the letter and its envelope down the dark gap between the door and the solid floor. Denkou presses their left receptor to the floor and tries to listen as the paper flutters deep into the elevator shaft.
A blunt beep resounds from inside the elevator. Denkou gasps and runs out of the frame. The door closes again, and they can faintly hear it recede down the shaft again. This means someone else needs to use the elevator. Fearing that this person is on their way to Denkou's floor, they run back to Mr. Skunk's door.
Denkou turns the doorknob slowly and eases into the room, just like they did on the way out. Once in, Denkou remembers to re-lock the door, too, and they relax. They're all safe and at home again. Denkou spins on their heel and becomes visible again.
Mr. Skunk is still snoring in his room. Denkou decides to go check on him and maybe show him the colour papers. As they near his bedroom door, they can vaguely hear a racket out in the street; it comes from the same window Mr. Skunk blocked off from the sun. The streets outside always sound so scary. The grey man and Jazz are very brave for walking alone out there.
A man is yelling out on the pavement. Denkou pauses to try and parse his words. It's in English, but that's all they can discern. Denkou realizes they've been standing there for long enough to watch Skunk wake up.
Skunk's eyes are bleary and just barely open. He lays in a tangle of limbs and bedsheets, which are stark red and black against his oversized white linen pajamas. The air around Skunk and Denkou is starched with tiredness, and their stares meet, the two of them quietly staring at each other.
"...Did he wake you up too?" Skunk blearily asks. Denkou doesn't want to lie, so they just shrug.
Mr. Skunk kicks the blankets off of himself and they fall in clumps on the floor. Skunk squints, gesturing for Denkou to come closer; he reaches for the colourful papers sticking out of Denkou's collar. Skunk takes them out, stares the papers down, and stares back at Denkou, his mouth opening slightly.
Skunk mumbles, "...The ▒▒▒▒ you find this...?"
"Laundry cart," Denkou says. "It was stuck on one of its wheels."
Denkou was told not to lie to the family, but they thought of the cart right away. It was the first thing that came to mind, since it was the first thing they saw when they woke up that morning. Mr. Skunk begins to grin and caress the papers.
"Not bad, musta' been on the floor in the hall...!" Skunk sits up, proud. "Too bad for the guy who dropped it, eh?"
The guy outside interrupts this. Skunk looks to the window, disgusted, and he starts to get out of bed. Denkou scrambles out of the way but keeps their gaze on Mr. Skunk. Denkou has barely seen him look so serious.
Mr. Skunk grabs a wine bottle off the floor by its neck. He approaches the window, holding the bottle up with one hand, and reaching for the window with the other. Denkou hurries to his side as Skunk pulls down the cardboard shade, revealing the open window. He pauses to stare down at the street, and Denkou can barely see over the windowsill.
The yelling man is easier to hear now. Denkou's receivers perk up, and they hear clearer now, "The end is nigh! The end is nigh!" His voice is scratchy and bellowing. He is an old man, long and lanky, wearing a piece of cardb- a "sandwich board", one of Denkou's processors provides, prioritizing the most curt readout. He wears a polo shirt and stiff beige pants and lots of wrinkles on his face. He is also holding tons of small papers; they're colourful like Skunk's papers but bigger and thicker.
"What's a nigh?" asks Denkou.
"He's one of those cybercult fundies...the guy who manages this division's members lives nearby..." Skunk squints. "...▒▒▒▒, that is their division leader."
Denkou has a lot of words to download. When they have all been processed, almost 1400ms later, Denkou asks, "What's a cult?"
"It's, uh, a buncha people who all live in a special system," Skunk sputters. He is anxiously rocking on his heels, moving the bottle around in the air, trying to aim it just right. "Some of 'em think the world is gonna end or some bad ▒▒▒▒'s gonna happen."
"So he's saying the world's gonna end?" Denkou knows they sound scared. Mr. Skunk looks down at them, a little surprised; he gives them a smile so comforting that Denkou bursts into a smile.
"Nah, nah..." Skunk turns back to the window. "...He's just delusional."
Skunk throws the bottle. Denkou's system processes the definition for "delusional" as Skunk screams out the window, "Death from above!"
The bottle explodes on top of the man. He sinks into a half-crouch, arms out, surrounded on the pavement by shards of green glass. He drops his papers all over the ground and shuffles; it reminds Denkou of a turtle they saw on television. People passing by begin to stop and approach him.
Mr. Skunk erupts into laughter. Denkou laughs, too. They step away from the window, beginning to mimic the old man's shambling. Mr. Skunk laughs even harder, much to Denkou's delight.
"You're too good, kid!" Skunk is laughing while he puts the cardboard back in the window. "C'mon, let's go make some coffee."
Denkou smiles. Denkou really likes when Mr. Skunk is happy. He's so much easier to talk to.